A peep into life in Africa, through the eyes of an African Reformed Baptist pastor.

Water, water, water, everywhere. What else do you expect? I am a Baptist, and I live in the land of the mighty Victoria Falls!

Sunday, March 12, 2017

To go to church or watch football?

This is an almost embarrassing question
to ask but I am sure this weekend many Zambian Christians asked themselves this
question and even concluded that they would skip church and go to watch
football instead—with a clear conscience. It is sad but true.

For those who are regular readers of my
blog and live outside Africa I will need to explain. Zambia, like most African
countries, is a one–sport nation and it is football (what Americans call
“soccer”). It is the main game that is played in villages with balls made from
clothing and plastic materials. It is also the main game played in our stadiums
with leather balls.

When the Zambian national football team
is playing, that becomes the chief talking point for the whole nation. The
adrenaline of the entire nation rises. Social media is abuzz with excitement as
goals are scored. The goal scorers literally become the heroes of the nation.
If the national football team wins a regional or continental cup, the whole
nation goes agog. When our entire national football team perished in an
airplane accident, the whole nation came to a stand still and mourned. That is
how attached Zambia is to football.

Here is the catch. Every so often, the
big matches are played on Sunday and Christians miss church in order to watch
the games on television or out in stadiums. This is what bothers me. How can
Christians fail to see that this is wrong from every conceivable angle?

Desecrating the Lord’s Day

The greatest tragedy is a failure to
keep the Lord’s Day. The God whom Christians worship says in the Ten
Commandments, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall
labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your
God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your
male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who
is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD
blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex. 20:8–11).

Once upon a time, when Christianity was
stronger than it is now and believers were taking their faith seriously, this
is how they interpreted this command. I quote from the Shorter Catechism of the
Westminster Assembly of the 17th century.

Q. 57. Which is the fourth commandment?

A. The fourth commandment is, “Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labour, and do all your
work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God: in it you shall
not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor
your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger that is within your gates:
for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them
is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and
hallowed it.”

Q. 58. What is required in the fourth
commandment?

A. The fourth commandment requires the
keeping holy to God such set times as he has appointed in his word; expressly
one whole day in seven, to be a holy Sabbath to himself.

Q. 59. Which day of the seven has God
appointed to be the weekly Sabbath?

A. From the beginning of the world to
the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the
weekly Sabbath; and the first day of the week ever since, to continue to the
end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath.

Q. 60. How is the Sabbath to be
sanctified?

A. The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a
holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations
as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and
private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the
works of necessity and mercy.

Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth
commandment?

A. The fourth commandment forbids the
omission or careless performance of the duties required, and the profaning the
day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary
thoughts, words or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.

Nothing can be clearer than that. In the
book of Isaiah, God made this promise to his people, “If you turn back your
foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the
Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it,
not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then
you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of
the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the
mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13–14).

Sadly, we have lost all this. It is very
clear as I read postings by Christians and church pastors on social media that
there is not the foggiest sense of guilt that God’s people have desecrated the
Lord’s Day. I would not be surprised if some churches cancelled their worship
services because of the football match today. What I know for a fact is that
many churches end up with skeleton congregations and haphazard preparations for
worship when the Zambian national team is playing a major match on the Lord’s
Day. Sadly, pastors accept this.

I have never forgotten, one Sunday in
the early years of Kabwata Baptist Church when we were still meeting in the
Kabwata Community Hall, the Zambian national football team was playing a
decisive match at world level. When I got to church, nothing was ready. The
building was open but the place had not been swept and the pews had not been
arranged. By the time the church service was supposed to start, even the
hymnbooks had not yet been brought. We started the service very late. By the
time I got into the pulpit to preach, I failed to preach and started crying. I
wept because my own church members had voted with their feet. Football was more
important than the worship of the living God. How could I simply continue with
the sermon that I had prepared to preach? I could not. I could only weep.

A form of idolatry?

Zambian Christians need to ask
themselves a heart-searching question: “Could it be that football has become
our idol?” An idol is not necessarily a carving made of wood or an object of
metal. Whatever competes with God’s place in our hearts is an idol. When we
spend a whole week anticipating a football match instead of the worship of God
on the Lord’s Day and then when the day comes we abandon the worship of God in
order to shout and jump and scream in a stadium (or at home in front of a
television set) with the energy that would make the makers of Red Bull feel
their product was redundant, is this not a form of idolatry? I opine that we
have merely exchanged a carved idol with one that is made of leather and air!

What breaks my heart is when I think of
the price that was paid by God to bring us our salvation. As Dottie Rambo sang:
“[Jesus] left the splendour of heaven / Knowing his destiny / Was the lonely
hill of Golgotha / There to lay down his life for me.” More than that, God
moved men and women to leave the comfort of their developed countries in the
West to come to our dark continent when it was infested with untreatable
malaria and ferocious wild beasts at great cost to their lives and their
families so that they could bring us the Christian faith. Many of them never
saw their relatives and friends again. Many died in their prime. Now that the
baton has been passed on to us, we are willing to abandon the worship of the
true God because twenty-two men are kicking a piece of leather across a field
for ninety minutes. This is heart breaking. Our pioneer missionaries should be
shifting in their graves—to use a well-known expression. Is this what Christ
died for? Is this the gratitude we show those who sacrificed their lives? Or,
as the apostle Paul would argue, did football die for you? Sadly, it is a
well-known sin of the fourth and fifth generation. They take their religious
inheritance for granted and will not sacrifice anything for it—not even
football on the Lord’s Day.

I know that someone will charge me with
being legalistic. I only ask those who want to do this to show me anywhere in
history where believers have gone sport-crazy and the cause of Christ has gone
from strength to strength. It is the cause of Christ I am concerned about. Is
it glorifying to God when a congregation that is normally 100-strong suddenly
reduces to half its size when there is a football match in town? Or are we
supposed to “look elsewhere” and pretend this did not happen in places where
God, our universal Benefactor, is worshipped?

To my fellow pastors

I have much more to say about this but
let me end with a word to my fellow pastors. We are the ones who grieve God the
most because we ought to know better and we ought to guide God’s people. In the
book of Malachi, God was displeased with the priests. He said to them, “A son
honours his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is
my honour? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to
you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your
name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we
polluted you?’ By saying that the LORD’s table may be despised. When you offer
blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are
lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept
you or show you favour? says the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 1:6–8).

If we who are pastors do not stand up
and warn our generation that the abandoning of the true worship of God whenever
there is a “major” football match being played on the Lord’s Day is sinful, God
will hold it against us when he brings judgment upon the church. Sadly, on
social media the only denunciation I am hearing from the lips of pastors is
against the Senegalese team for its alleged use of witchcraft in the game. Even
pastors whose church doctrinal statements categorically speak about keeping the
Lord’s Day holy are mute about the sinfulness of the trend that has engulfed
us. The silence is a betrayal of Christ! Are we afraid of upsetting our
paymasters? God forbid! We must be a prophetic voice in our day even if our
message is rejected. God will honour us for our courage on the day he rewards
his own. On the other hand, if we are the very ones leading the pack into the
stadiums to desecrate the Lord’s Day, what hope will there be for today and
tomorrow’s church? None!

10 comments:

As one from a developed country in the West I am embarrassed to report that even well-regarded congregations considering themselves Reformed have annually surrendered their Sunday evening service to the Superbowl, cleverly disguising it as a 'fellowship' with big screen TV, chili cookoffs and chips and dip. Football in the United States is certainly competiting with God for Christians' time and affections, and it's winning, as are various youth sports leagues which practice and play on Sundays, trapping parents into being ogres in the eyes of both their kids and the coaches if they choose worship over soccer/baseball/football, or offending God by being 'good parents' in those same eyes. I remember Martin Holdt often decrying 'Sunday trading' from the pulpit, and RSA at that time had very few shops open on Sundays in comparison to my USA. Satan is our very clever adversary, never to be underestimated, and only to be resisted and overcome by the power of Christ in us.

I weep, that our people should be able to say "no" to temporary "joy" in exchange of everlasting joy which is in Christ alone. Discernment must be implied, moreover wisdom must be practice in our daily walk.

Many "Christians" have their hand on the plow and looking back, they are not fit for the kingdom.

Thank you for sharing this eye opening message with us. Surely, most professing believers are guilty, and legalists we are to them if we speak against their most favorite. Thanks be to God we are by His grace justified and will be rewarded for standing up for what is right.

Amen Pastor Mbewe! The sin of idolatry has crept in the church in a very subtle way and there is need for a warning to be sounded from all pulpits of faithful preachers and by all the faithful remnants of God.

Dear brother, completely agree with you. Pastors are hugely responsible. Acts 20:28 says it very clearly: Take heed to thyself and watch over the flock whom God has given to you. If the flock flocks to football matches, pastors ought to flog themselves for not having the courage to tell them the truth.

Thank you Pastor. For every true Christian the day of worship is dedicated to God. Whatever human pleasures may fall on the Lord's day must be considered a distraction and must not be entertained. We were created for His pleasure and worshipping Him gives Him great pleasure.

Thank Pastor Mbewe, you speak my mind. In fact Sabbath breaking is one of the neglected OT principles by the Church today as I cited in my book. Christians today don't know they ought not put on their TV on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath day for sports and entertainment talk less of missing Church. It is a shame that the Church today, even in my country, Nigeria, could treat our Lord so by rejecting Him for another. Yea, the new Christians would call you and I legalistic, because, they say Christians are not under the OT law. The fail to understand the role of the moral law of God embedded in the Ten Commandment is a means of our sanctification - a rule of life, neither do we neglect the civil laws of our lands and be punished by the law enforcement of our countries. But the ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ atoning sacrifice for us. Our fellow pastors should teach their people better. A man had said he cannot love a game where eleven foolish men running around a small round thing for 90 minutes. To do so is foolishness and IDOLATRY.